16-year-old draws prison time for unprovoked attacks

GOSHEN — A teenager was sentenced to lockup for two unprovoked stabbings in the City of Middletown.

BY HEATHER YAKIN

GOSHEN — A teenager was sentenced to lockup for two unprovoked stabbings in the City of Middletown.

Atiq Weston, 16, of the Town of Wallkill, was 15 when the crimes were committed. He was charged as an adult in the assaults and indicted on attempted murder charges, pleading guilty on July 16 to two counts of first-degree assault. He appeared Friday in Orange County Court.

In one of the cases, Assistant District Attorney Leah Canton told the court, "the defendant was with his friends in a taxicab, and for no apparent reason decided he was going to stab the cab driver. He told one of his friends he was going to 'body' the cab driver." There was no robbery involved.

In the other case, she said, Weston attacked the same person twice in December 2007, "and stabbed (him) to the extent that he needed to be transported to Westchester Medical Center" for his injuries. Again, Canton said, Weston attacked without provocation.

Prosecutors asked for 2﻿1/2 to 7﻿1/2 years, just shy of the three-to-nine-year maximum on the charge for a juvenile offender.

Weston declined to speak at the sentencing.

His lawyer, Matthew Witherow, asked only that Judge Robert H. Freehill abide by the deal he set at the July 16 guilty plea: 1﻿1/2 to 4﻿1/2 years on each count, to run concurrently.

That was the sentence Freehill imposed, along with orders of protection for each of the victims, through Feb. 28, 2014.

"These two events occurred some time ago and at this point, you're not even 17 years old," Freehill told Weston. "It's frightful, the violence you're apparently capable of, Mr. Weston. These appear to be random, unprovoked acts that you tried to delegate to the people you were with."

Freehill noted that in trying to pawn off the stabbings on his friends, Weston's story was that he just happened to be there when someone got stabbed.

"The proof I see is that you always seem to be there stabbing someone," Freehill said.

The judge told Weston he hopes the teenager gets some kind of therapy or counseling in prison, to defuse some of the anger that seems to fill him.

As Weston was led out of the courtroom, he turned his head briefly and looked back at the one family member who came to watch the sentencing.